I have to agree. From what I have seen of Second Life, that and "higher education" do not belong in the same sentence. Second Life is where the people who are too retarded for other games go to "play".
Seriously, I tried to play it once and within five minutes of creating a character I had one female avatar offer to go offline and have "sex via instant messaging" for cash and another try to sell me some random crap that I didn't have a clue about. Needless to say, I deleted the game and never played again. Not to mention, the graphics and interface were not all that appealing.
I'm not a big fan of MMOs as they tend to be incredibly tedious and repetitive and pointless, but Second Life seemed to take that to the extreme. How about instead of offering higher education in some idiotic virtual chat room, people can just log into a website and watch videos or listen to lectures and participate that way? Or even better... they could actually go to an actual school for an actual education.
Or maybe I'm just stupid.
But not stupid enough to waste my first life playing Second Life.
Of course, the law is rather meaningless. When I was starting out in the industry, I had to work an hourly job and while I was paid for 40 hours, I almost never took a lunch or a break and I easily put in 70, 80 or more hours per week every week.
You could speak up and take your breaks and lunches, but then you look like a slacker when people see that you are not in your office, but everyone else is there. It's the same thing about working late in salaried jobs. People can put in the hours required and paid or they can put in endless hours so they are always seen busing their ass... because if you're the one NOT doing it when everyone else IS you're going to be paying for it in the long run when decisions about your future are made.
If you would believe religious nuts, morality comes from baby jesus and baby jesus alone. People who are agnostic or atheist can not, according to these religious nuts, possibly have any morals. This is illustrated by the question you always hear them ask: If you didn't believe in jesus, why wouldn't you just go out and start killing people?
I'm not really an A/V geek by any means. I have a really high end system, but I had to do a lot of research on that as I was making my purchase decisions and also rely on a lot of educated people I knew to help guide me.
That said, the component cables provided out of the box with the off the shelf Xbox 360 are not of the highest quality. They are not terrible by any means, but I noticed a significant improvement in my system when I replaced them with the Monster Xbox 360 Component cables. And at the time, they weren't $45 -- but $75!
The HDMI would probably be an improvement over the component cables that are shipped with the xbox, too. I am not sure if the XBOX-provided HDMI cables would be better than high quality component cables, though. And that may in fact be a partial explanation for why Microsoft is offering it. Not so much "HDMI is better than component!" as "This HDMI cable is better than the component cable we were shipping with the product".
Frankly, I doubt you are going to notice a massive difference either way. I simply went into it with the "I want the best I can get, regardless of cost" rout. I already had so many damn cables between my tuners, consoles, speakers, television, cable box and everything else that four or five more cables for the component-out instead of HDMI would have been irrelevant.
It sounds like HDMI might be your preference - especially if you just want one thing to plug in. The only thing I would be sure to check is whether or not you have an HDMI port where its needed. I'm sure your television might have one, but if you are planning to route your console through your A/V tuner instead, you'll obviously want to ensure that your tuner has an HDMI-input on it.
For me, any consideration of HDMI comes down more to philosophy than anything else. My personal choice is that if I can get comparable performance out of something that doesn't shove DRM up my ass (whether or not said DRM actually interferes with my use or not), then I will go for that. For many others, that isn't a consideration and I realize I tend to be in the paranoid minority when it comes to this.:)
Similarly, I believe the problem exists in reverse. I do not possess all the facts about this at the moment, but I believe there is a lot of HD content (or pending HD content) which will not unlock for play on your computer monitor unless it is an HDCP/HDMI device. In other words, the $3,200 Apple Cinema Display I bought a little over a year ago won't be able to play a lot of future HD content in true HD. Not because of some fundamental inability in the hardware to reproduce the content, but because the gatekeeper (the HDCP?) is required to allow you to view it. And for that, you need a monitor with HDCP built-in.
Nobody wants HDMI "so bad" and even if they did, the reason they didn't buy the non-HDMI one in the first place is that there isn't an HDMI one, yet. Second, I don't believe that HDMI can be considered a "new feature". It doesn't really add anything except HDCP which is of no benefit whatsoever to a consumer.
I have yet to see any explanation as to why a consumer (fanboy or not) would want an HDMI cable for their xbox. It doesn't necessarily improve quality, performance or anything else as I stated and other responses have clarified as being essentially accurate.
So, as far as I can tell - it may be a conspiracy. Unless they really think that HDMI is simply more convenient for people. But I don't buy that as the reason they're shipping it. I think it's because Microsoft is all about advertising the DRM-ability of their devices to developers and content producers. Especially with the whole Xbox Live distribution market. If they can say that a majority of their console owners are now using HDMI (which means they're using HDCP), then that might be a huge negotiating point when it comes to acquiring third party content for their services.
I wasn't aware that 1080p was really only possible via HDMI. I intend to go with a dedicated HD-DVD/Blueray-DVD hybrid player as soon as they're relatively affordable though, so I'm not too concerned.
Or is the deployment of HDMI cables in a pending XBOX 360 console a signal that games will eventually be in 1080p? I do believe I heard something about some PS3 game coming out as 1080p in the future, even though I thought 1080p was supposedly kind of pointless for anything other than actual video (movies, etc).
I suspect that most people who have a high end television with HDMI ports also have high end audio systems and, thus, want everything to run through their tuners instead of the television. I'd rather have dedicated outputs that allow me to squeeze the best out of each element with the best components. I would suspect that HDMI audio-out would be "convenient" but not high quality.
Of course, it's all about the source content and I suspect that the console manufacturers just don't care about that, because they're catering to the 70% rather than *also* focusing on giving the other 30% a little something. No matter how great your setup, you're only going to pull so much out of a cheap little console with its cheap little cables.
But I do hope that people are smart enough not to be sucked into the "deploy HDCP via HDMI" propaganda.
Buy yourself the Monster Xbox 360 Component cable for $45. If you have a good television, the difference between a good component-out and that which comes in the box is very noticeable.
Obviously, I haven't yet compared it to the HDMI-out, but I don't know that it is going to be better than a quality component-out. I'll wait until someone has had the chance to test and compare them before I bother getting excited over an HDMI cable.
As I said in another post in this thread I am not an A/V geek. However, as best I understand the true advancement of HDMI is not the quality of the image, but the implementation of HDCP. I don't know about you, but enhanced digital copy protection does not excite me and I'm certainly not going to spend money to further subject myself to the whims of the data providers and distributors.
Now, if I'm wrong and the quality really does end up being impressive over a good component-out, then I'll probably go ahead and get it. And even then, how will we know that the console isn't simply designed to detect when component or HDMI is being used so that it can intentional reduce the quality of component, thus promoting the implementation of HDMI eagerly and willingly by consumers, thereby introducing HDCP into every home without anyone actually stopping to contemplate what they're subjecting themselves to?
I currently have an XBOX 360 that uses a Monster component-out to connect to my 65" Sony SXRD. It's beautiful at 1080i. My understanding is that HDMI has no performance improvement over the display of component though. Is that correct?
I'm not an audio-visual geek necessarily, so I may be confused. However, as I understood things HDMI's real contribution is not that of performance or quality, but of increased capability for content creators to control the data being carried over the signal. Is that true? I would have no problem buying this new 360 when it comes out if HDMI is a significant improvement over component, but it seems the best information I can find is itself indifferent and says that "neither is necessarily better than the other although particular devices may present a better experience with one over the other" (see quote below).
So, the question is - with a high end television and an Xbox 360 - which of the two is going to be preferable? It sounds to me like they're just releasing it with "HDMI" so that people will be suckered into buying the console all over again under a false believe that HDMI is going to provide them a significantly better result.
So, which is better, DVI or component? HDMI or component? The answer--unsatisfying, perhaps, but true--is that it depends. It depends upon your source and display devices, and there's no good way, in principle, to say in advance whether the digital or the analog connection will render a better picture. You may even find, say, that your DVD player looks better through its DVI or HDMI output, while your satellite or cable box looks better through its component output, on the same display. In this case, there's no real substitute for simply plugging it in and giving it a try both ways. Source:DVI vs. HDMI vs. Component Video -- Which is Better?
Anyone familiar with the Mayan Calendar? December 21, 2012 (13.0.0.0.0 in the Mayan Calendar) Coincidence?" Yes, coincidence. Unless you're some idiot who gets his science via Art Bell and his pseudo-science guests and you also believe in grays and "mel's hole".
Seriously.. wtf?! Why would anyone even include that comment in a scientific submission?
I'm sure I'll upgrade my one Windows box some time. Probably next time I build a new box (which I usually do once or twice a year). That way I'll get the OEM discount, too. Most people will eventually migrate to Windows Vista for gaming, because the experience offered by DirectX10 is stunning. I hate doing it, but until there is a viable gaming platform on PCs that do not require Microsoft's OS, that's the price we have to pay.
And for what that's worth, I understand that CCP is going to upgrade the Eve-Online engine in the future and actually plan to pump in DirectX10 support (though DirectX9 will still be supported). I don't know about you, but the idea of a well-built Eve-Online using all sorts of tasty DirectX10 goodness gets me excited.
I don't buy CDs anymore, unless they are to support a band I'm interested in and it is the only way I can purchase them. First thing I'll do is run home and rip them so I can add them to my digital collection, which is how I listen to 100% of my music.
I don't buy anything with DRM. If there is DRM, I'm more likely to just get it from bit torrent or a Russian site. It will have much higher quality, too.
However, if you have good music and the money is going to you and I can get it simply via digital download, I'm all over that. I won't pay a dollar a song on iTunes and have never used that. For a buck a song, I might as well just go buy the CD and rip them myself so I don't have any DRM restrictions in the first place! But if you have unrestricted, quality MP3s available for a simple download (like Anders Manga, The Low, etc) I will gladly pay $10 or $12 an album and - quite recently - have a number of times.
I think this goes to support the growing swell of "I'm willing to pay if you're willing to give me what I want".
Yeah, nothing sounds more exciting than playing a couple of gamer dorks who live together in their 30s in an RPG. The only thing I can imagine coming even close would be a Pogo sidescroller or a Calvin & Hobbes RTS.
Yeah, I can't say that I'm excited at all to play a videogame about or by a couple of dorks who have an occasionally humorous and often dumb digital comic strip. I would rank any such product up there with online flash games by Kraft like "cheesier macaroni blaster".
I'm sure they're nice enough guys. But fuck, it's just a god damn comic strip. Why not make a Slashdot video game? Slashdot is something I actually check out on a regular basis. I can't remember the last time I went out of my way to read an online comic strip. Might have been during a long boring weekend at the office a year or so ago...
I don't really even care. Viacom sucks. So does Youtube. I hope they all somehow fail miserably, even though they probably won't. The world is full of idiots that can watch nut-shots all day long and never get tired of it. But really, Youtube is not "the little guy". Youtube started by a rich kid from a rich family (or at least, he married into wealth) and is now owned by google. It's not like there's some deserving indie guy here working hard for us. If it was profitable for Google to crack down on copyrights, they would do so. This isn't about right and wrong or philosophical points. It's about money. Viacom makes money by preserving their copyrights. So they prosecute infringements. Youtube makes money by violating copyrights. So they justify infringements or at least try damn hard to excuse them.
No, it isn't IRQ routing/sharing - although Creative swore up and down as long as they could get away with it that such was the problem. Not to mention, it's 2007 -- you're SUPPOSED to share IRQs.
I believe that one guy found a reasonable explanation which was that Creative was using very cheaply made capacitors. He replaced the capacitors with his own higher quality capacitors and the problem went away. I don't know what ever came of that discovery as I have long since sworn off Creative. Not having the EAX support in games is a loss, but having sound that isn't a thousand times worse than the most corrupted vinyl album is worth it.
For some people, onboard sound is enough anyway. You'll take a good performance hit to your system and it won't have the same quality as a good dedicated soundcard, but if you don't do much or need much, it's not a huge deal. I found that the Realtek HD onboard audio on my latest mobo was even good enough to suffice for gaming needs until I was able to find an alternate card that I liked.
Two words that would make me refuse to ever buy another Creative Labs card as long as I love:
crackle pop
Last two cards I have purchased and used on four different computers have done nothing but snap, crackle and pop non-stop. To the point that after about five minutes you would probably smash your speakers against the wall.
Onboard audio works fine.
Non Creative Labs cards work fine.
Creative Labs cards invariably fail.
This is a known issue. It has been plaguing their product for a couple of years now and all they have done is blame everyone else. Their forums have multiple threads which each run into the thousands of posts, all looking for an explanation as to why the $250 Creative Lab card they just bought sounds like rice krispies on crack.
Still no response from them, apparently.
So . . . Creative will never get my business again. Period.
I don't get the "console makers get a cut" part. How can they require that?! I'm pretty sure Ford doesn't get a direct cut every time I fill up my tank or buy a new car stereo.
Well, as I stated, my latest debian install took about an hour and at least half of that time was spent downloading data since it was off a net-inst image. And, unlike in Ubuntu, I don't have to do anything special to just get a clean system installed.
When I say that I'd like a plain install, I don't mean "I just want LAMP". I mean, I want a plain install. I don't even want an ssh/sshd, telnet or screen installed. I'm just fine installing those on my own and as I like.
Really, I have come to love Ubuntu for a desktop installation that is based on all the debian goodness I've come to know for the better part of a decade without all the hassle . . . I just could not figure out why I would want Ubuntu (or any of the ubuntu "flavors") to deploy a server installation.
As for debian sacrificing some ease... I really don't see it. In fact, the reason I have stuck to Debian with such a die-hard attitude since about 1999 is that I found it far superior to the other options like RedHat when it came to a straightforward install with a powerful interface.
About the only complaint I've ever had with Debian are that there are occasionally package philosophy conflicts such as the whole "this is how we do it at Debian" versus "this is how we do it at Ruby" mindsets that make Ruby a little painful on Debian (though I don't deal with Ruby personally, so I don't care much). The other complaint is just the package ages, which is a small price to pay. Sometimes there are some rather vital packages that are a solid year out of date even in the testing branch. Ugh!
I just hope they keep things going. The infighting and confusion within the Debian bureaucracy seems to keep growing each year.
My first thought when I heard about this was rather similar. That is "why did they send the notices to the university, if they knew the exact students?". A subpoena is usually served in person, to the person it is intended for and I believe it is usually signed for by the recipient (if the delivery person can sucker them into doing it before they figure out what it is).
So is it a desktop environment? A Window Manager? A bloated shell on top of a bloated desktop environment? Why in the hell would I want a Mozilla desktop environment over Gnome, KDE, XFCE and others which have been doing a great job for a long time?
Here is what I want my browser to do: Browse the internet. Here is what I want my email client to do: Handle email. Here is what I want my FTP client to do: Transfer files.
Just make a good fucking browser and stop trying to branch out.
Yeah, no kidding. This is why I dropped Mozilla and switched to Firefox/Thunderbird years ago. I want specific applications that do one or two things very damn well. You know, kind of like the linux/unix philosophy. The last thing I want are the guys at Mozilla trying to design my whole desktop experience. Just because it says "Mozilla" doesn't mean I'm going to hate it any less than when Microsoft tried this crap.
Same here. I had an Ubuntu/XFCE disk handy and thought I'd just install my development server from that. Surely there has to be an option during installation that says "don't install any crap that I don't want installed... such as a window manager". And... maybe there is. But it wasn't apparent during the install.
So I burned a Debian etch net-inst disk and tossed that in, instead. Easy as pi.
Slashdot Mirror
I have to agree. From what I have seen of Second Life, that and "higher education" do not belong in the same sentence. Second Life is where the people who are too retarded for other games go to "play".
Seriously, I tried to play it once and within five minutes of creating a character I had one female avatar offer to go offline and have "sex via instant messaging" for cash and another try to sell me some random crap that I didn't have a clue about. Needless to say, I deleted the game and never played again. Not to mention, the graphics and interface were not all that appealing.
I'm not a big fan of MMOs as they tend to be incredibly tedious and repetitive and pointless, but Second Life seemed to take that to the extreme. How about instead of offering higher education in some idiotic virtual chat room, people can just log into a website and watch videos or listen to lectures and participate that way? Or even better... they could actually go to an actual school for an actual education.
Or maybe I'm just stupid.
But not stupid enough to waste my first life playing Second Life.
Of course, the law is rather meaningless. When I was starting out in the industry, I had to work an hourly job and while I was paid for 40 hours, I almost never took a lunch or a break and I easily put in 70, 80 or more hours per week every week.
You could speak up and take your breaks and lunches, but then you look like a slacker when people see that you are not in your office, but everyone else is there. It's the same thing about working late in salaried jobs. People can put in the hours required and paid or they can put in endless hours so they are always seen busing their ass... because if you're the one NOT doing it when everyone else IS you're going to be paying for it in the long run when decisions about your future are made.
If you would believe religious nuts, morality comes from baby jesus and baby jesus alone. People who are agnostic or atheist can not, according to these religious nuts, possibly have any morals. This is illustrated by the question you always hear them ask: If you didn't believe in jesus, why wouldn't you just go out and start killing people?
I'm not really an A/V geek by any means. I have a really high end system, but I had to do a lot of research on that as I was making my purchase decisions and also rely on a lot of educated people I knew to help guide me.
:)
That said, the component cables provided out of the box with the off the shelf Xbox 360 are not of the highest quality. They are not terrible by any means, but I noticed a significant improvement in my system when I replaced them with the Monster Xbox 360 Component cables. And at the time, they weren't $45 -- but $75!
The HDMI would probably be an improvement over the component cables that are shipped with the xbox, too. I am not sure if the XBOX-provided HDMI cables would be better than high quality component cables, though. And that may in fact be a partial explanation for why Microsoft is offering it. Not so much "HDMI is better than component!" as "This HDMI cable is better than the component cable we were shipping with the product".
Frankly, I doubt you are going to notice a massive difference either way. I simply went into it with the "I want the best I can get, regardless of cost" rout. I already had so many damn cables between my tuners, consoles, speakers, television, cable box and everything else that four or five more cables for the component-out instead of HDMI would have been irrelevant.
It sounds like HDMI might be your preference - especially if you just want one thing to plug in. The only thing I would be sure to check is whether or not you have an HDMI port where its needed. I'm sure your television might have one, but if you are planning to route your console through your A/V tuner instead, you'll obviously want to ensure that your tuner has an HDMI-input on it.
For me, any consideration of HDMI comes down more to philosophy than anything else. My personal choice is that if I can get comparable performance out of something that doesn't shove DRM up my ass (whether or not said DRM actually interferes with my use or not), then I will go for that. For many others, that isn't a consideration and I realize I tend to be in the paranoid minority when it comes to this.
Similarly, I believe the problem exists in reverse. I do not possess all the facts about this at the moment, but I believe there is a lot of HD content (or pending HD content) which will not unlock for play on your computer monitor unless it is an HDCP/HDMI device. In other words, the $3,200 Apple Cinema Display I bought a little over a year ago won't be able to play a lot of future HD content in true HD. Not because of some fundamental inability in the hardware to reproduce the content, but because the gatekeeper (the HDCP?) is required to allow you to view it. And for that, you need a monitor with HDCP built-in.
Nobody wants HDMI "so bad" and even if they did, the reason they didn't buy the non-HDMI one in the first place is that there isn't an HDMI one, yet. Second, I don't believe that HDMI can be considered a "new feature". It doesn't really add anything except HDCP which is of no benefit whatsoever to a consumer.
I have yet to see any explanation as to why a consumer (fanboy or not) would want an HDMI cable for their xbox. It doesn't necessarily improve quality, performance or anything else as I stated and other responses have clarified as being essentially accurate.
So, as far as I can tell - it may be a conspiracy. Unless they really think that HDMI is simply more convenient for people. But I don't buy that as the reason they're shipping it. I think it's because Microsoft is all about advertising the DRM-ability of their devices to developers and content producers. Especially with the whole Xbox Live distribution market. If they can say that a majority of their console owners are now using HDMI (which means they're using HDCP), then that might be a huge negotiating point when it comes to acquiring third party content for their services.
I wasn't aware that 1080p was really only possible via HDMI. I intend to go with a dedicated HD-DVD/Blueray-DVD hybrid player as soon as they're relatively affordable though, so I'm not too concerned.
Or is the deployment of HDMI cables in a pending XBOX 360 console a signal that games will eventually be in 1080p? I do believe I heard something about some PS3 game coming out as 1080p in the future, even though I thought 1080p was supposedly kind of pointless for anything other than actual video (movies, etc).
I suspect that most people who have a high end television with HDMI ports also have high end audio systems and, thus, want everything to run through their tuners instead of the television. I'd rather have dedicated outputs that allow me to squeeze the best out of each element with the best components. I would suspect that HDMI audio-out would be "convenient" but not high quality.
Of course, it's all about the source content and I suspect that the console manufacturers just don't care about that, because they're catering to the 70% rather than *also* focusing on giving the other 30% a little something. No matter how great your setup, you're only going to pull so much out of a cheap little console with its cheap little cables.
But I do hope that people are smart enough not to be sucked into the "deploy HDCP via HDMI" propaganda.
Buy yourself the Monster Xbox 360 Component cable for $45. If you have a good television, the difference between a good component-out and that which comes in the box is very noticeable.
Obviously, I haven't yet compared it to the HDMI-out, but I don't know that it is going to be better than a quality component-out. I'll wait until someone has had the chance to test and compare them before I bother getting excited over an HDMI cable.
As I said in another post in this thread I am not an A/V geek. However, as best I understand the true advancement of HDMI is not the quality of the image, but the implementation of HDCP . I don't know about you, but enhanced digital copy protection does not excite me and I'm certainly not going to spend money to further subject myself to the whims of the data providers and distributors.
Now, if I'm wrong and the quality really does end up being impressive over a good component-out, then I'll probably go ahead and get it. And even then, how will we know that the console isn't simply designed to detect when component or HDMI is being used so that it can intentional reduce the quality of component, thus promoting the implementation of HDMI eagerly and willingly by consumers, thereby introducing HDCP into every home without anyone actually stopping to contemplate what they're subjecting themselves to?
I currently have an XBOX 360 that uses a Monster component-out to connect to my 65" Sony SXRD. It's beautiful at 1080i. My understanding is that HDMI has no performance improvement over the display of component though. Is that correct?
I'm not an audio-visual geek necessarily, so I may be confused. However, as I understood things HDMI's real contribution is not that of performance or quality, but of increased capability for content creators to control the data being carried over the signal. Is that true? I would have no problem buying this new 360 when it comes out if HDMI is a significant improvement over component, but it seems the best information I can find is itself indifferent and says that "neither is necessarily better than the other although particular devices may present a better experience with one over the other" (see quote below).
So, the question is - with a high end television and an Xbox 360 - which of the two is going to be preferable? It sounds to me like they're just releasing it with "HDMI" so that people will be suckered into buying the console all over again under a false believe that HDMI is going to provide them a significantly better result.
So, which is better, DVI or component? HDMI or component? The answer--unsatisfying, perhaps, but true--is that it depends. It depends upon your source and display devices, and there's no good way, in principle, to say in advance whether the digital or the analog connection will render a better picture. You may even find, say, that your DVD player looks better through its DVI or HDMI output, while your satellite or cable box looks better through its component output, on the same display. In this case, there's no real substitute for simply plugging it in and giving it a try both ways.
Source: DVI vs. HDMI vs. Component Video -- Which is Better?
Seriously.. wtf?! Why would anyone even include that comment in a scientific submission?
I'm sure I'll upgrade my one Windows box some time. Probably next time I build a new box (which I usually do once or twice a year). That way I'll get the OEM discount, too. Most people will eventually migrate to Windows Vista for gaming, because the experience offered by DirectX10 is stunning. I hate doing it, but until there is a viable gaming platform on PCs that do not require Microsoft's OS, that's the price we have to pay.
And for what that's worth, I understand that CCP is going to upgrade the Eve-Online engine in the future and actually plan to pump in DirectX10 support (though DirectX9 will still be supported). I don't know about you, but the idea of a well-built Eve-Online using all sorts of tasty DirectX10 goodness gets me excited.
I don't buy CDs anymore, unless they are to support a band I'm interested in and it is the only way I can purchase them. First thing I'll do is run home and rip them so I can add them to my digital collection, which is how I listen to 100% of my music.
I don't buy anything with DRM. If there is DRM, I'm more likely to just get it from bit torrent or a Russian site. It will have much higher quality, too.
However, if you have good music and the money is going to you and I can get it simply via digital download, I'm all over that. I won't pay a dollar a song on iTunes and have never used that. For a buck a song, I might as well just go buy the CD and rip them myself so I don't have any DRM restrictions in the first place! But if you have unrestricted, quality MP3s available for a simple download (like Anders Manga, The Low, etc) I will gladly pay $10 or $12 an album and - quite recently - have a number of times.
I think this goes to support the growing swell of "I'm willing to pay if you're willing to give me what I want".
Yeah, nothing sounds more exciting than playing a couple of gamer dorks who live together in their 30s in an RPG. The only thing I can imagine coming even close would be a Pogo sidescroller or a Calvin & Hobbes RTS.
Yeah, I can't say that I'm excited at all to play a videogame about or by a couple of dorks who have an occasionally humorous and often dumb digital comic strip. I would rank any such product up there with online flash games by Kraft like "cheesier macaroni blaster".
I'm sure they're nice enough guys. But fuck, it's just a god damn comic strip. Why not make a Slashdot video game? Slashdot is something I actually check out on a regular basis. I can't remember the last time I went out of my way to read an online comic strip. Might have been during a long boring weekend at the office a year or so ago...
I don't really even care. Viacom sucks. So does Youtube. I hope they all somehow fail miserably, even though they probably won't. The world is full of idiots that can watch nut-shots all day long and never get tired of it. But really, Youtube is not "the little guy". Youtube started by a rich kid from a rich family (or at least, he married into wealth) and is now owned by google. It's not like there's some deserving indie guy here working hard for us. If it was profitable for Google to crack down on copyrights, they would do so. This isn't about right and wrong or philosophical points. It's about money. Viacom makes money by preserving their copyrights. So they prosecute infringements. Youtube makes money by violating copyrights. So they justify infringements or at least try damn hard to excuse them.
No, it isn't IRQ routing/sharing - although Creative swore up and down as long as they could get away with it that such was the problem. Not to mention, it's 2007 -- you're SUPPOSED to share IRQs.
I believe that one guy found a reasonable explanation which was that Creative was using very cheaply made capacitors. He replaced the capacitors with his own higher quality capacitors and the problem went away. I don't know what ever came of that discovery as I have long since sworn off Creative. Not having the EAX support in games is a loss, but having sound that isn't a thousand times worse than the most corrupted vinyl album is worth it.
For some people, onboard sound is enough anyway. You'll take a good performance hit to your system and it won't have the same quality as a good dedicated soundcard, but if you don't do much or need much, it's not a huge deal. I found that the Realtek HD onboard audio on my latest mobo was even good enough to suffice for gaming needs until I was able to find an alternate card that I liked.
Two words that would make me refuse to ever buy another Creative Labs card as long as I love:
crackle pop
Last two cards I have purchased and used on four different computers have done nothing but snap, crackle and pop non-stop. To the point that after about five minutes you would probably smash your speakers against the wall.
Onboard audio works fine.
Non Creative Labs cards work fine.
Creative Labs cards invariably fail.
This is a known issue. It has been plaguing their product for a couple of years now and all they have done is blame everyone else. Their forums have multiple threads which each run into the thousands of posts, all looking for an explanation as to why the $250 Creative Lab card they just bought sounds like rice krispies on crack.
Still no response from them, apparently.
So . . . Creative will never get my business again. Period.
I don't get the "console makers get a cut" part. How can they require that?! I'm pretty sure Ford doesn't get a direct cut every time I fill up my tank or buy a new car stereo.
Well, as I stated, my latest debian install took about an hour and at least half of that time was spent downloading data since it was off a net-inst image. And, unlike in Ubuntu, I don't have to do anything special to just get a clean system installed.
When I say that I'd like a plain install, I don't mean "I just want LAMP". I mean, I want a plain install. I don't even want an ssh/sshd, telnet or screen installed. I'm just fine installing those on my own and as I like.
Really, I have come to love Ubuntu for a desktop installation that is based on all the debian goodness I've come to know for the better part of a decade without all the hassle . . . I just could not figure out why I would want Ubuntu (or any of the ubuntu "flavors") to deploy a server installation.
As for debian sacrificing some ease... I really don't see it. In fact, the reason I have stuck to Debian with such a die-hard attitude since about 1999 is that I found it far superior to the other options like RedHat when it came to a straightforward install with a powerful interface.
About the only complaint I've ever had with Debian are that there are occasionally package philosophy conflicts such as the whole "this is how we do it at Debian" versus "this is how we do it at Ruby" mindsets that make Ruby a little painful on Debian (though I don't deal with Ruby personally, so I don't care much). The other complaint is just the package ages, which is a small price to pay. Sometimes there are some rather vital packages that are a solid year out of date even in the testing branch. Ugh!
I just hope they keep things going. The infighting and confusion within the Debian bureaucracy seems to keep growing each year.
My first thought when I heard about this was rather similar. That is "why did they send the notices to the university, if they knew the exact students?". A subpoena is usually served in person, to the person it is intended for and I believe it is usually signed for by the recipient (if the delivery person can sucker them into doing it before they figure out what it is).
So is it a desktop environment? A Window Manager? A bloated shell on top of a bloated desktop environment? Why in the hell would I want a Mozilla desktop environment over Gnome, KDE, XFCE and others which have been doing a great job for a long time?
Here is what I want my browser to do: Browse the internet.
Here is what I want my email client to do: Handle email.
Here is what I want my FTP client to do: Transfer files.
Just make a good fucking browser and stop trying to branch out.
Yeah, no kidding. This is why I dropped Mozilla and switched to Firefox/Thunderbird years ago. I want specific applications that do one or two things very damn well. You know, kind of like the linux/unix philosophy. The last thing I want are the guys at Mozilla trying to design my whole desktop experience. Just because it says "Mozilla" doesn't mean I'm going to hate it any less than when Microsoft tried this crap.
Uh. I believe the difference would be the mal part. Update - as annoying as it is - is not malicious.
Same here. I had an Ubuntu/XFCE disk handy and thought I'd just install my development server from that. Surely there has to be an option during installation that says "don't install any crap that I don't want installed... such as a window manager". And... maybe there is. But it wasn't apparent during the install.
So I burned a Debian etch net-inst disk and tossed that in, instead. Easy as pi.